The Lodge and Goodnight Mommy filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala unleash their bleakest film yet this week with The Devil’s Bath, and an exclusive new clip teases the harsh realities of living in the 18th century.
The Devil’s Bath arrives exclusively on Shudder on Friday, June 28.
Here’s the official plot synopsis for the German-language horror movie: “In 1750 Austria, a deeply religious woman named Agnes has just married her beloved, but her mind and heart soon grow heavy as her life becomes a long list of chores and expectations. Day after day, she is increasingly trapped in a murky and lonely path leading to evil thoughts until the possibility of committing a shocking act of violence seems like the only way out of her inner prison.”
Check out the clip below, which sees Agnes (Anja Plaschg) giving chase in the woods, only to come upon a grisly cautionary tale for those who commit grave acts of sin.
Shot on 35mm, The Devil’s Bath is based on historical records, and the film debuted at Berlinale this year, where it was awarded a Silver Bear for Martin Gschlacht’s cinematography.
David Scheid, Maria Hofstätter, Camilla Schielin, and Lorenz Tröbinger also star.
If the plot description and clip below don’t make it clear, The Devil’s Bath is grim and emotionally devastating. I wrote in my review, “That the horror stems from grim reality and historical accounts leaves no room for levity or escapism; it’s two hours of escalating suffering, building toward a horrific finale that packs a potent, somber punch. The exquisite craftsmanship and powerhouse performances keep you deeply invested in this downward spiral, but buckle up: it’s a downer of the highest order.”
The Devil’s Bath is produced by Heimatfilm Productions and Ulrich Seidl Productions as a co-production with Heimatfilm and Coop99 Filmproduktion.
Spider One (Bury the Bride) is headed back into the director’s chair for the upcoming Big Baby, a meta slasher featuring Brandon Scott (Dead to Me) and Krsy Fox (Terrifier 3).
Deadline details this week, “Adam Marcinowski (Allegoria) plays the title character, with Jordan Elsass (Little Fires Everywhere), Radek Lord (Ballers), Torio Van Grol (Accident, Suicide or Murder), Catherine Corcoran (Terrifier), Kate Freund (Creepshow), Cameron Cowperthwaite (Station 19), Kirby Bliss Blanton (Project X), Nelson Leis (The Last of Us) and Chaz Bono (American Horror Story) rounding out the cast.”
In Big Baby, “Adam Lewis (Scott) is a successful horror screenwriter struggling for inspiration for his latest script. After a graphic and realistic nightmare of a hulking man dressed in a baby mask and onesie who axe murders his girlfriend Kate (Fox) in the middle of the night, Adam gets the inspiration he needs for his new screenplay.
“Excited about the direction his story is taking, he starts losing himself in his script. Things are better than ever for Adam and Kate until “Big Baby” (Marcinowski) starts appearing in real life and tormenting and killing victims fueled by his own revenge. Characters from Adam’s script begin to pay him visits pleading for their lives, and he quickly realizes he holds their fate in his hands. Power and fear completely consume Adam until his girlfriend Kate is terrified of the man she once loved.”
Spider One said in a statement, “My goal for Big Baby was to turn the slasher genre inside out…to craft a meta script about creation and those creations coming to life. It’s a terrifying premise centered around a writer desperately trying to control the narrative of his script and his life, which of course proves to be an impossible task with deadly consequences.”
Producers for the horror film from OneFox Productions include music legend Cher.
Dexter’s Laboratory finally has a complete series DVD set with (almost) every episode and the hour-long special Ego Trip. But it does have some shortcomings.
Harry Potter, Lanterns, and the IT prequel will officially be HBO shows. Can Warner Bros. Discovery actually preserve the quality associated with that brand?
By the 1950s, the Universal Monsters had become a punchline with most of them ending their onscreen careers meeting Abbott and Costello. Many of them had become victims of their own success, becoming so iconic that they had lost any ability to frighten anybody. Creatures from outer space, radioactive monsters, and giant bugs had taken over the throne as horror’s reigning attractions and anything that deviated from these felt passé and played out. Universal itself supplied plenty of its own creations into this theatrical landscape and relegated its classic monsters to the small screen. Into this environment came something new from the studio that all but created the modern horror film when Universal unleashed Creature from the Black Lagoon into the world.
There is much about the Creature that is similar to the Universal monsters that have come before. Like Lon Chaney’s Phantom, Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein Monster, and Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolf Man, the Gill Man is a very sympathetic monster. It is his territory that has been invaded by strangers and he is merely defending his home. There is a strong Beauty and the Beast quality to the film which is evident throughout the classic monster cycle dating all the way back to The Phantom of the Opera in 1925, but also strongly evident in various forms in Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Wolf Man (1941), and the 1943 remake of Phantom starring Claude Rains in the titular role. Finally, Creature features an iconic monster design that has stood the test of time, this one by the brilliant Milicent Patrick and fabricated by a talented group of artisans. For all this and more, the Creature fits comfortably among the classic Universal Monsters, though he arrived over ten years after the next youngest member of the group.
There are several more reasons, however, why the Creature stands out from the others, and one of the biggest is the time that he came to be. In the 1950s, there was a marked move away from gothic horror and toward science fiction. So, unlike the nebulous time, vaguely eastern European setting of Creature’s predecessors, the film is clearly set in the modern day and a scientific rather than supernatural explanation is given for the existence of the Gill Man. The prologue offers an oddly religion-infused evolutionary history that posits that a human-like creature could have evolved from fish. The recently rediscovered lung fish is offered more than once as a real-world example of the possibility. Like much science fiction, Creature from the Black Lagoon is an extrapolation of existing theories taken to logical conclusions based on the information available. So naturally, the film’s protagonists are scientists, Dr. David Reed (Richard Carlson), Dr. Mark Williams (Richard Denning), and Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams), who fulfills the dual role common to 50s science fiction of a knowledgeable scientist that is also able to play the damsel in distress. Fortunately, Adams manages to be more of the former than the latter.
Like great science fiction going all the way back to Mary Shelley, Creature explores the ethical questions surrounding scientific pursuits, in this case specifically as they relate to environmental impact. The human expedition repeatedly contaminates the Gill Man’s ecosystem while attempting to lure him out. They claim it is for the noble purposes of science and discovery, but in reality, their motives are purely selfish. As Mark tells David, “They won’t believe it back home. None of them. I wouldn’t have believed it myself. Sitting out here waiting for some monster to appear. That’s why we’ve got to take him…We must have the proof.” So, Mark’s entire reasoning for dropping poison in the water that kills the fish in the lagoon, shooting the Gill Man with a harpoon, and relentlessly pursuing him day after day is so that people won’t think he is crazy or lying to them. Later, David calls Mark out on this. When the Gill Man has built a dam to prevent their boat from leaving the lagoon, David decries Mark saying, “we’re trapped and fighting for our lives and you’re worried about whether people will believe us.” The environmentalism underlying Creature is unusual for the 1950s but the scientific ethics evident in the narrative are unmistakable.
Related to this is a subtext of colonialism. The Amazonian expedition is invading the Gill Man’s territory; it is only natural for him to fight back. In this sense, the Gill Man bears more similarity to another famous monster than any of his Universal kindred—King Kong. Like Kong, the Gill Man would not be a threat at all if he were simply left alone. He is only interpreted as a threat by those who wish, in both cases, to find him, capture him, and take him from his home. In a way, the second half of King Kong, in which he is taken from Skull Island to New York, is played out in Revenge of the Creature (1955), in which the Gill Man is taken to a Florida national park to be observed by scientists but also the general public. In both cases, the creatures run amok and pose a danger to “civilization” but only because of the unethical practices of those who took them from their natural environment in the first place.
Also like King Kong, Creature contains a strong Beauty and the Beast element with the creature falling in love with Kay during a memorable sequence in which she takes a swim. The scene has been called a kind of sexual encounter, or at least as much of one as could be depicted in 1954. Where Kong’s infatuation with Fay Wray’s character carries with it an unintended racial element, that is not really the case here. The Gill Man is lured by one who seems to be like him in a spiritual sense. Kay swims without the breathing apparatus that Mark and David wear. She does not carry any weapons or seem to pose any threat to him. He is undoubtedly enticed by her beauty but there is also a sense that he cares about her and sees her as something more like him than the others, something he wants to protect and perhaps even save from them.
To some extent, the Creature’s feelings are reciprocated by Kay who expresses great sympathy for him when he is captured in a makeshift cage by the male scientists after the Creature has killed a member of the expedition. Mark calls her out on it. “You sound as though you feel sorry for him. Why? He could have killed you just as easily.” Kay responds by saying, “But he didn’t.” As mentioned before, it is not uncommon for audiences to feel empathy for the monsters in the Universal films, but it is fairly unusual for characters in the films to do so. Kay is the voice of the audience in the film. Her love for the Creature is our love for the Creature, and that love has only grown in the seventy years since he first appeared on screen.
Milicent Patrick long went uncredited as the designer of the Gill Man, as she worked in a time when only the studio department heads received onscreen credit, but she created one of the true masterpieces of creature design. It is clear that the team that helped fabricate the suits did so pretty much exactly the way she drew them. Though Jack Pierce made some of the greatest designs of the 1930s and 40s, the Creature likely would have been beyond his abilities as he was reluctant to use the kinds of materials needed to realize such a design. To this day, the Gill Man feels so real. The design is so plausible for what a man that evolved from fish would look like. With his scales and spine of fins down his back, the gaping mouth, and the moving gills it is all so tangible. No wonder fans continue collect his image in statues, action figures, Pez dispensers, masks, on t-shirts, posters, and other various collectibles.
Sure, in the ensuing years the Creature became something of a punchline of his own. He didn’t meet Abbott and Costello in a movie, but he did meet them on television. He became Uncle Gilbert on The Munsters, and in that episode, he could talk. More recently, Stanley Hudson (Leslie David Baker) wore a Gill Man mask in a Halloween episode of The Office so he could sleep at his desk. But somehow, the Creature has managed to escape most of the more egregious iterations that befell his Universal brethren. Today, the Creature and the films he appeared in are among the most beloved of all the Universal Monster movies. Perhaps he escaped the slow descent into mediocrity and worse that occurred with some of the others by only appearing in a trilogy, one with a rather tragic conclusion in The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).
I think the reason for his enduring popularity comes down to the character of the Gill Man himself. He is more than just a brilliant design and costume brought to life by Ben Chapman on land and Ricou Browning underwater. There is an intangible to him that was also present in Karloff’s Frankenstein monster and Chaney’s Larry Talbot/Wolf Man that draws us to him. Perhaps it is a relatability about them all. We see ourselves in these creatures. Our hearts break for them because we have experienced the kinds of rejection they experience in these films. Some of us feel like the Gill Man—what others might call a “freak” being bullied by people who don’t understand that we just want to be left alone. The reality is, the Gill Man is not a freak but a unicorn, a creature that is totally unique in the world. That uniqueness brings him the kind of loneliness that we have all felt, but that doesn’t make him any less special. We realize what the other characters in the film don’t, that he is not something to be studied and gawked at, but should instead be allowed to thrive on his own terms. Maybe we are drawn to him not only because we understand the Creature, but because we in fact, are the Creature.
In Bride of Frankenstein, Dr. Pretorius, played by the inimitable Ernest Thesiger, raises his glass and proposes a toast to Colin Clive’s Henry Frankenstein—“to a new world of Gods and Monsters.” I invite you to join me in exploring this world, focusing on horror films from the dawn of the Universal Monster movies in 1931 to the collapse of the studio system and the rise of the new Hollywood rebels in the late 1960’s. With this period as our focus, and occasional ventures beyond, we will explore this magnificent world of classic horror. So, I raise my glass to you and invite you to join me in the toast.
This week’s new horror releases bring a hit franchise back to theaters while a few recent theatrical releases – including Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 – slash their way home.
Here’s all the new horror releasing June 24 – June 30, 2024!
Gravitas Ventures travels ahead to the year 2045 for their latest indie horror effort, with The Hunger Games-meets-slasher Arena Warsreleased onto VOD outlets this past Tuesday.
In the film from director Brandon Slagle, “In 2045 convicted criminals are given the opportunity to compete on the world’s #1 televised sporting event. They must survive 7 rooms and 7 of the most vicious killers in the country. If they win, they regain their freedom.”
Michael Madsen, John Wells, Robert LaSardo and Eric Roberts star.
Also released onto VOD outlets this past Tuesday is the Korean horror anthology Tastes of Horror, which Well Go USA Entertainment presents to audiences here in the United States.
Well Go USA previews, “The Korean horror anthology features ten short films directed by five of the most acclaimed directors of the genre in South Korea.”
The film is based on the same-titled webtoon.
Slasher sequel Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 was unleashed into theaters this past March, and beginning today (June 26), the film is finally now available at home.
Blood and Honey 2 is exclusively available on Amazon Video on Demand.
“Deep within the 100-Acre-Wood, a destructive rage grows as Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Owl, and Tigger find their home and their lives endangered after Christopher Robin revealed their existence. The group decides to take the fight to the town of Ashdown, home of Christopher Robin, leaving a bloody trail of death and mayhem in their wake.”
The cast for Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 includes Tallulah Evans, Alina Desmond, Scott Chambers (Doctor Jekyll) as Christopher Robin, Ryan Oliva (Seasoning House) as Winnie-the-Pooh, and Peter DeSouza-Feighoney (The Pope’s Exorcist) as Young Pooh.
Paul Le wrote in his review right here on Bloody Disgusting, “This flawed but enjoyable sequel defies expectations — albeit low ones — and outperforms its predecessor on most levels.”
Spinoff prequel A Quiet Place: Day One will be making its way into theaters this Thursday night, June 27, and you can watch the final trailer from Paramount down below.
Lupita Nyong’o (Us), Joseph Quinn (“Stranger Things”) and Alex Wolff (Hereditary) star in Day One. Michael Sarnoski (Pig) heads to A Quiet Place to direct the new movie.
Djimon Hounsou, who appeared in A Quiet Place Part II, will reprise his role in Day One.
Entertainment Weekly detailed the upcoming movie’s prequel storyline, “Lupita Nyong’o stars as Sam, a woman who’s on a day trip to New York City when the monsters arrive.
“As everything quickly goes to hell, she’s thrown together with a man named Eric (Joseph Quinn). With some reluctance, the pair agree to navigate and survive the city together.”
The spinoff is based on an original idea by John Krasinski and Michael Sarnoski, and it was written by Sarnoski. Meanwhile, it’s expected that the Abbott family storyline will become a trilogy with Krasinski recently teasing that he has ideas for the third film in the main series.
Oscilloscope Laboratories has picked up U.S. distribution rights to Adrien Beau’s The Vourdalak, and the acclaimed 18th Century vampire tale is releasing this week.
The film opens this Friday, June 28th, at New York City’s IFC Center with writer/director Adrien Beau in attendance. Limited tickets for the screenings are still available HERE.
It’s adapted from Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s 1839 gothic horror novella The Family of the Vourdalak, which actually predates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by over half a century.
In the upcoming film, “When the Marquis d’Urfé, a noble emissary of the King of France, is attacked and abandoned in the remote countryside, he finds refuge at an eerie, isolated manor. The resident family, reluctant to take him in, exhibits strange behavior as they await the imminent return of their father, Gorcha. But what begins simply as strange quickly devolves into a full fledged nightmare when Gorcha returns, seemingly no longer himself.”
Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s novella also served as the basis for one of the segments in Mario Bava’s 1963 horror anthology film Black Sabbath, which was titled “The Wurdulak.”
You can’t see them, but they see everything in director Ishana Night Shyamalan’s feature debut, The Watchers. If you missed it in theaters, it’s coming home this week.
The Watchers will be available on premium video on demand on Friday, June 28.
The film follows Mina, a 28-year-old artist, who gets stranded in an expansive, untouched forest in western Ireland. When Mina finds shelter, she unknowingly becomes trapped alongside three strangers who are watched and stalked by mysterious creatures each night.
The Watchers stars Dakota Fanning (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Georgina Campbell (Barbarian), Oliver Finnegan (“Creeped Out”), and Olwen Fouere (The Northman).
The mystery-horror film is produced by M. Night Shyamalan, Ashwin Rajan and Nimitt Mankad. The executive producers are Jo Homewood and Stephen Dembitzer.
The Watchersis based on the novel by A.M. Shine.
Austrian filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala (The Lodge, Goodnight Mommy) are back with The Devil’s Bath, and it’s coming exclusively to Shudder on June 28.
Shot on 35mm, The Devil’s Bath is based on historical records, and the film debuted at Berlinale this year where it was awarded a Silver Bear for Martin Schlacht’s cinematography.
Here’s the official plot synopsis for the German-language horror movie: “In 1750 Austria, a deeply religious woman named Agnes has just married her beloved, but her mind and heart soon grow heavy as her life becomes a long list of chores and expectations. Day after day, she is increasingly trapped in a murky and lonely path leading to evil thoughts, until the possibility of committing a shocking act of violence seems like the only way out of her inner prison.”
Anja Plaschg, David Scheid, Maria Hofstätter, Camilla Schielin, and Lorenz Tröbinger star.
After being released exclusively in theaters just last month, the unique, extremely gruesome slasher movie In a Violent Nature is coming home to VOD outlets this Friday, June 28.
In the film, “When a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that entombs the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 60-year old crime, his body is resurrected and becomes hellbent on retrieving it. The undead golem hones in on the group of vacationing teens responsible for the theft and proceeds to methodically slaughter them one by one in his mission to get it back – along with anyone in his way.”
Chris Nash wrote and directed In a Violent Nature. Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Reece Presley, Liam Leone, Charlotte Creaghan, Lea Rose Sebastianis, Sam Roulston, Alexander Oliver, and Lauren Taylor star in the slasher film.
Meagan Navarro wrote in her Sundance review for Bloody Disgusting, “In a Violent Nature may offer slasher thrills and a delightfully gory rampage across the wilderness, but Nash’s approach captures the carnage through ambient realism. It results in a fascinating arthouse horror experiment that plays more like a minimalist slice-of-life feature with a grim twist.”
The Greater Philadelphia area’s new non-profit horror organization dedicated to supporting indie horror, Delco Horror Haven, hosted their second film premiere event this past Saturday with the screening of Porch Pirate. This is the first full-length feature film from the Philly-based Baby Goblin Productions.
Porch Pirate tells the story of young, low-rent thief Bobby (Dru Montana, the ‘Durag and the Deertag’ Podcast), who is duped into stealing packages from the houses of unsuspecting families in the suburbs by his friend and literal partner-in-crime Ray (Geoff Colella). Ray presents his business as “legitimate,” and Bobby goes along with it although the gig is obviously illegal and both are on parole. The duo’s racket is to sell their stolen goods to shady local pawn shop owner Mike (Mike Salvi, Mistransaction), who takes advantage of them by buying for a fraction of the items’ worth—like every pawn shop dealer in the history of pawn shopping.
After failing to steal some packages, Bobby is able to snag a mysterious box from a house owned by middle-class couple Andy (Shaun Abel, Domestic Bliss) and Linda (Tara Beavers, Yester-Years). Once they finish scoring some more stolen wares, Ray joins Bobby back at his sister Delia’s (Ellie Summerling, Backside Comedy) house, who is royally pissed that Bobby has brought all of this contraband into her home. Although they have a genuinely loving relationship, Bobby and Delia are a bit different from one another. Delia appears to maintain both a stable job and equally stable lifestyle (she even enjoys popcorn with a glass of Cabernet– a dinner combo of champions!), but she fears being sucked into the void with them because she is now ultimately an accomplice.
Soon Delia’s fears become the least of her concerns once Bobby and her notice a strange red liquid oozing out of the box Bobby stole from the middle-class couple. And yes, you guessed it, that red liquid is blood. The package’s leakage is the first domino to fall in a chain of events that includes learning the box’s content, attempts to return the package and other shenanigans. Se7en might be best known for the question and subsequent meme “What’s in the Box?!” but Porch Pirate goes the extra mile showing you what’s in the box and all the ensuing havoc.
Writer-Director Dorian Vasquez shot his film to look and feel just like a low budget B-movie that you’d find in a Mom ‘n’ Pop VHS shop back in the day, with weird lighting, random cuts and all the standard B-movie fixtures. Or another comparison for Porch Pirate would be a film shown in the last late morning timeslot during USA’s Up All Night, where Gilbert Gottfried or Rhonda Shear were only doing voiceovers for the bumpers. And that, dear readers, is not an insult at all. They used to air some underrated low budget gems during that 3am timeslot that Vinegar Syndrome currently sells (and sells out of) for almost $30.
What Porch Pirate lacks in budget, it more than makes up for in plot originality, story interest and enticing characters. It definitely has its own vibe that could be a catalyst into being a cult status prospect, if enough people get their eyes on it. While the film is promoted as a suspense-thriller and delivers on those elements, a key driver to this film’s entertainment are the portions of intended comedy stemming from the ad-libbing of the main stars during certain scenes.
All of the actors provide fun performances and display great chemistry, which is not all that common to find in B-movies. And that is because (fun fact alert!) all the actors in this horror film, sans the middle-class couple, are actually stand-up comedians and comedy podcasters local to the Tri-State area (yes, Philadelphia counts nowadays). The combination of their genuine comedic talents, improv game and reactions to each other is on-point, with the comedy not landing in the realm of corniness or just straight up being cheesy.
During the Q&A session, Vasquez announced that alongside the upcoming in-person screenings, Porch Pirate will be debuting soon to Tubi, but you can watch it now on Reveel. This is definitely a film that is worth checking out if you are a fan of indie filmmaking with a unique twist.
Meanwhile, Delco Horror Haven’s next film premiere screening is on August 19 at The Towne House in Media, PA with 12 to Midnight—starring Daniel Roebuck and Tito Ortiz.
David Bruckner (V/H/S, Southbound, The Ritual, The Night House, Hellraiser) has set up his next horror movie, with Deadline reporting today that Bruckner will direct a horror movie project titled Mice that’s being financed and produced by the horror masters at A24.
Deadline notes in their exclusive report, “Todd Spence and Zak White penned the script and the spec marks their first sale to a major studio, quite the sale for first time scribes.”
It’s a horror movie, we know that much, but plot details for Mice are being kept under wraps for now. If it brought A24 on board, we expect it’s a damn good horror script. Stay tuned.
A24 has been one of the leading forces within the genre for the last several years, with projects on the horizon including MaXXXine, The Front Room, Heretic, and “Crystal Lake.”
It’s a good time to be a horror fan. Then again, isn’t it always?
